


The Life We Lived

by Chromi



Category: One Piece
Genre: Bittersweet, Committed Relationship, Loss, Love, M/M, Marco Just Loves Ace OK, Sad Ending, Sex, the author is sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-07 00:56:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20300806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromi/pseuds/Chromi
Summary: They say that ultimately, pirates cannot have good, content lives, as they are forever on the run and always looking over their shoulders. They cannot truly love, settle down or genuinely enjoy another’s company more than the riches they harvest.He’d like to say otherwise.





	The Life We Lived

_They say that ultimately, pirates cannot have good, content lives, as they are forever on the run and always looking over their shoulders. They cannot truly love, settle down or genuinely enjoy another’s company more than the riches they harvest._

_He’d like to say otherwise._

**

He thinks, knows, that their happiest times together occurred when Ace was nineteen - at eighteen he was still somewhat childish in all honesty, physically smaller and mentally younger than the twenty-year-old who took off on his skiff that one fateful day. Aged twenty, Portgas D. Ace was fiercer, stronger, broader, cleverer than the lonely rookie Marco had offered soup and stern words to during his fourth month aboard the Moby Dick.

Maybe he had been wrong to pursue an eighteen year old - although in his defence, it had been Ace who had done the chasing (otherwise known as stalking, if you heard the story from one Thatch). Or maybe it had been right, or neither good or bad; after all, who had the right to judge two adult pirates based on age? Live in the now or forever hold your peace.

**

It began with a quickness, as if the flames they created would go out if they danced around the subject too long. The highs and lows of their initial feelings could never be recreated, and they never assumed they would try to do so.

They meet mostly at night, while one is cocky and the other comfortably sleepy, neither pretending to dislike the other’s company (neither needing to). Thatch joins them on occasion but can sense the boundary growing wider between himself and his two friends, but cannot put his finger on why. He doesn’t wish to.

They throw themselves into fights with enemies the day after the Logia user kisses him. They don’t work together, going alone, their stomachs bubbling with nerves when they recall the feel of each other’s lips to their own. Blue sees Red and yearns to be mixed into the colour purple. Red sees Blue and goes crimson with embarrassment.

Not saying a word, not looking at each other, not being mature. Letting their ruffled feathers settle and their raging fire quell before addressing their beating hearts.

**

He is up in the air.

He is staring at the sun and it is so bright that there are tears forming in the corners of his eyes. Below him is the swell of celebration from winning a battle and returning home. Below him, too, is _him_.

He thinks of the past as he descends, thinks of what he would do and who he would be with that evening, enjoying the inevitable celebration, if Ace were not there. He ponders over whether or not someone else would have been first to hug him with a shy smile as he lands on human feet, whether a different crew member would have pushed a bottle of beer into his palm to disguise the fleet brushing of fingers.

He hopes not.

His head is filled with thoughts of him until the celebrations are over. He is not affected by the vast amounts of alcohol he is coerced into drinking and all he can see is Ace. Ace, tipsy, laughing into Izou’s hair as he holds up the drunk commander. Marco is too old to feel the growth of unnecessary jealousy.

He meets his eyes and hopes he can see the clearness in them.

That night, half asleep on deck, the young man’s hand reaches for his. He can feel the warmth from his fingertips before they even come into contact.

**

Before this family, Ace had felt an emptiness, partially filled by the brothers he dearly loved. He knew that. He did not want to exploit that. But when Ace crept into his room late at night and heated up the cold blankets and steamed up the window, he felt at ease, that he wasn’t doing anything wrong or taking advantage of a man who had never truly been loved like this.

Some nights they will lie idle, sharing stories of their past or of other crew-mates, teasing each other or reading the same book at different speeds, waiting for the other to hurry up and finish the page.

Some nights they will bicker and Ace will leave in a flurry of flames, only to return with a sheepish grin as his emotions smouldered and calmed. He will fall asleep first, and Ace will count the number of times he breathes a minute, making a song in his head to the slow rhythm.

And some nights, they cannot keep their hands off each other. His hands will go to the black hair, fingers running through it, tugging it, stroking it. He will press his lips to the young man’s, cradle his head with one hand and undress him with the other. He will make love to him, burying his face in the curve of his neck and call out his name against the salty skin.

_Ace._

He no longer remembers sleeping alone.

**

They do not make their relationship public.

Ace learns quickly not to follow him when he is free, not to frown when he can’t sit by him at mealtimes, and that he will not always catch him when his narcolepsy kicks in.

In turn, he learns not to wait for the younger man while he showers, to take watch with other crew-mates, and to save his ‘size matters’ quips for in the bedroom.

He had never considered marriage until Ace asks him if it were possible between two men of the same crew. He laughs, smiles, and continues with his day.

Ah, to be young again.

**

He is scrubbing the plates of the first through fourth divisions, volunteering for the most basic of roles for a change. He whistles a tuneless tune, something he thinks he remembers Ace coming up with one drunk night a while ago.

Another pair of hands plunge into the water beside him, and he looks to his right.

Ace, grinning.

Happy. So very, very gorgeous.

They begin a furious water fight, laughing into the soapy mess. His fingers twine into Ace’s locks, soaking him. Ace pushes him up against the sink, too close, _not close enough_, and melts into him.

He holds him, holds his beating heart to his chest, and he knows him.

**

He asks him to marry him on a blind impulse one evening when they are eating dinner together. He says the line as he sits with his chin resting in his palm, watching the younger man shovel food into his mouth, his freckled face framed perfectly by his thick black hair and his biceps bulging after their long and difficult training session earlier (all he can think of is how he wants every day to be exactly like this). Ace chokes on his food, looks around himself with terrified eyes - no one is listening - and takes a moment to recover.

“Is that really how you want to pop the question?” he laughs, joking, neither mean spirited nor mocking.

All he can do is blush furiously and return to playing with the chicken on his plate that he so does not want to eat.

A warm hand on his stops him, and Ace grins at him. He then leans forward and places a kiss on his lips, daring to do what should never be done between two brothers in this crew.

They have a hell of a time explaining everything to Thatch, the only person who happens to look over to their secluded two-seater table at that time, later on that night.

**

Their last night together before Ace leaves is not wasted. It is as if they know that something terrible is going to happen and that they will not see each other after the early hours of tomorrow.

Ace colours himself red and flickers of nervous flames tickle at his shoulders. He makes a vow, out loud, answering his proposal from weeks before, followed by looking away and frowning nervously.

He takes Ace by the hand and pulls him in close, whispering those three words before closing the space between them and delving inside the warm mouth that so willingly opens for him. He kisses him lovingly, passionately, yet as if he were delicate and would smash under rough treatment.

It takes a lot to break Ace.

They move around the room many times, changing their positions and places frequently as if there is some unwritten rule stating that every surface must be touched by their love making. Ace’s back has never arched so beautifully off the wall, and his breath has never frosted the glass of the window in such a way before tonight.

He lets himself be taken for the first time in their relationship, allowing Ace to do what he’s never done before. He can’t say he enjoys the psychological feeling of being dominated, of being entirely open under someone else, but when he catches his lover’s face in his palms and sees the expression there he wishes he had done it sooner. Tears dribble from the corners of his blue eyes as he pulls the Logia user close, breathing in his ashy smell and tracing the tattoo on his muscular back with his fingertips. He cannot understand why he is consumed by a poorly mashed together mix of raw love and appreciation for the younger man.

_If I let you go then you might disappear from my life._

The glow of the moon highlights his lover’s every curve and his jawline as he pulls back slightly. He closes his eyes to the slow kiss he is granted, his worries wiped away by Ace’s tongue against his as he arches his back into orgasm, sucking on the wet muscle in his mouth and caressing the fine body above him.

**

_He refuses to acknowledge the emptiness he felt the morning after his last night with Ace. Instead, he takes comfort in the alcohol in his bottle and the musings of what the next morning with the man who shone brighter than the sun would have been like._

**

He would have given the world to have awoken to find Ace snoring beside him.

He would have gone down to the kitchens and loaded up two platefuls of food (both for his lover) and a glass of orange juice balanced carefully somewhere in between. Ace would have awoken to the smell of food and complained briefly about how his body felt sore; his seductive grin would make his pleasure from the pain all too obvious.

Ace would have eaten, hungry, not thinking until the last minute to offer him something.

He wouldn’t need anything. The sight of Ace basked in the early morning sun is all that he would ever need for the rest of his mornings.

**

They would have discovered Teach’s plan. Or rather, he knows, Ace would have. He would have seen to it that Thatch was not harmed.

Music would ring across the deck in celebration after Teach is thrown overboard with a raft - Pops would not kill him. There would be dancing, singing, copious amounts of alcohol, and he would be swept up in the atmosphere of it all and would kiss his lover in front of everyone.

He would not care.

How could he, when Ace is his very air?

**

_He knew him like no one else could ever hope or imagine to. He knew of his fire, how it would dance along his skin as he gasped from the feel of it. It would not burn him, even if Ace had ever meant for it to, for he is not like a normal human. The phoenix called for Ace, yearned for his flames, and Ace was ever-granting. He was fire incarnate, his missing piece, his soul and his eternal love._

_He drops further into his mind, a smile on his lips as the warm hands of imagination card through his hair, over his face, and encapsulate his heart. He is happy like this._

_He is happy not hurting._

_So how is he to come back from this, if not to live on with Ace within his dreams?_

_And so he drowns, letting it pull him, knowing to sleep was to see Ace once again._

_And so he allows it._

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote this in April, 2011. I found it today on an old hard drive, along with all of my other fics from 2010 - 2013. Most of them were unfinished, some were incredibly badly written, some painfully OOC, and then there was this one that was just about salvageable. I've tidied it up and re-written some parts today, but it's mostly my work from back then.
> 
> I vaguely recall this being inspired by a fanfiction from a completely different series back in 2011. If I ever find it again - which I doubt I will as it wasn't bookmarked on my old FFnet account - then I'll link it here.


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